Living Life From A Third Person Perspective

[Meeting Minutes]

[...]

It's like holding a mirror up to a mirror. At first it seems like an 'infinite regress,' but then the observer spontaneously dissolves. [...]

[...]

A very good way to put it! In Russell Edson's "The Tormented Mirror" there's this patented technique in creating a world of reverberation by holding a mirror up to a mirror.  In doing so, the poet opens up a wormhole into the possibilities of being. Edson's poem "Sleep," permits the reader to examine some reflections of reflections beneath the mundane reflection of those who are supposedly awake and bored with day-to-day existence:

SLEEP

There was a man who didn't know how to sleep; nodding off every night into a drab, unprofessional sleep.
Sleep that he had grown so tired of sleeping.
He tried reading The Manual of Sleep, but it just put him to sleep. That same old sleep that he had grown so
tired of sleep-ing ...

[t h e r m o s]

A very good way to put it! In Russell Edson's "The Tormented Mirror" there's this patented technique in creating a world of reverberation by holding a mirror up to a mirror.  In doing so, the poet opens up a wormhole into the possibilities of being. Edson's poem "Sleep," permits the reader to examine some reflections of reflections beneath the mundane reflection of those who are supposedly awake and bored with day-to-day existence:

SLEEP

There was a man who didn't know how to sleep; nodding off every night into a drab, unprofessional sleep.
Sleep that he had grown so tired of sleeping.
He tried reading The Manual of Sleep, but it just put him to sleep. That same old sleep that he had grown so
tired of sleep-ing ...

Meeting, Edson is really a great poet - I particularly liked this one - and I will double post:

ACCIDENTS

A barber has accidentally taken off an ear. It lies like something newborn on the floor in a nest of hair.
Oops, says the barber, but it mustn't've been a very good ear. It came off with so little complaint.

[P e r i c l e s]

Meeting, Edson is really a great poet - I particularly liked this one - and I will double post:

ACCIDENTS

A barber has accidentally taken off an ear. It lies like something newborn on the floor in a nest of hair.
Oops, says the barber, but it mustn't've been a very good ear. It came off with so little complaint.

Entertainingly sarcastic! Edson appears to be in line with Steven Wrights quotes and work.

[as it happens]

Be alert to all your thoughts and feelings, don't let one feeling or thought slip by without being aware of it and absorbing all its content. Absorbing is not the word, but seeing the whole content of the thought-feeling. It is like entering a room and seeing the whole content of the room at once, its atmosphere and its spaces. To see and be aware of one's thoughts makes one intensively sensitive, pliable, and alert. Don't condemn or judge, but be very alert. To see "what is," is really quite arduous.

Watch what is happening inside you, do not think, but just watch, do not move your eye-balls, just keep them very, very quiet, because there is nothing to see now, you have seen all the things around you, now you are seeing what is happening inside your mind, and to see what is happening inside your mind, you have to be very quiet inside. And when you do this, do you know what happens to you? You become very sensitive, you become very alert to things outside and inside. Then you find out that the outside is the inside, then you find out that the observer is the observed.

We are ignorant of the general nature of our own processes of thought. To put it differently we do not see what is actually happening, when we are engaged in the activity of thinking. Through close attention to and observation of this activity of thought, Krishnamurti feels that he directly perceives that thought is a material process, which is going on inside of the human being in the brain and nervous system as a whole. Ordinarily, we tend to be aware mainly of the content of this thought rather than how it actually takes place. One can illustrate this point by considering what happens when one is reading a book. Usually, one is attentive almost entirely to the meaning of what is being read. However, one can also be aware of the book itself, of its constitution as made up out of pages that can be turned, of the printed words and of the ink, of the fabric of the paper, etc. Similarly, we may be aware of the actual structure and function of the process of thought, and not merely its content.

[Four,Christmases]

HAHAHA, as it happens!

[Birkena]

The psychedelic effects of the dissociatives are difficult to explain. They are nothing whatsoever like LSD or related drugs (mescaline, DMT, mushrooms, etc.) but they are clearly psychedelic. The best way I can explain the difference between dissociatives and traditional serotonergic psychedelics is this: Serotonergic psychedelics are Eros, and dissociatives are Thanatos. The serotonergics are Birth, they are sensory overload, focus on the details, awareness of the external universe. The dissociatives are Death, sensory shutdown, focus on the archetypes, awareness of the internal universe. Serotonergics are the "Ana" side of Chaos, dissociatives the "Kata" side of Chaos (Chaos being the essential driving energy behind reality, if you will). Ultimately, they can both take you to the same place -- mystical union, ego-loss, or just plain "trippin' balls" depending on your point of view -- but they take you by different routes. I like to think of both routes as complementary ... but only if they don't hurt you in the process of getting there!

They are markedly different from psychedelics such as LSD, where alert and fully conscious users experience cognitive distortion while simultaneously interacting with the "real world". Hallucinations from these dissociatives are generally only experienced in dark rooms or with eyes closed, unless at very high doses above what is normally consumed recreationally. NO has very different effects however, and even at low doses includes auditory distortions.

[the Void]

[...] Both deeply philosophical and profoundly pragmatic, Wallace's speech emphasized the fruitful implications of studying the contemplative mind, both from a third-person and from a critical first-person perspective. The critical first-person perspective is typically neglected by science because the modern scientific paradigm reveres absolute objectivity and impersonality, rendering the subjective "taboo," Wallace said. This subjective method would include critically examining one's own experience during meditation as a form of academic study.

Wallace fervently argued that this type of subjective, introspective study of the contemplative mind is vital, when coupled with the more traditional third-person mode of scientific research. Furthermore, Wallace said this type of contemplative study should be worked into the formal American higher education system. [...]

Great post dearlove!

The 2009 Mind and Life Summer Research Institute
Garrison Institute, Garrison, New York, June 7-13, 2009



Purpose

The purpose of the Mind and Life Summer Research Institute is to advance collaborative research among behavioral and clinical scientists, neuroscientists, and biomedical researchers based on a process of inquiry, dialogue and collaboration with Buddhist contemplative practitioners and scholars and those in other contemplative traditions. The long-term objective is to advance the training of a new generation of behavioral scientists, cognitive/affective neuroscientists, clinical researchers, and contemplative scholar/practitioners interested in exploring the potential influences of meditation and other contemplative practices on mind, behavior, brain function, and health. This includes examining the potential role of contemplative methods for characterizing human experience and consciousness from a neuroscience and clinical intervention perspective.

The specific goals of the Summer Research Institute are:

1) to cultivate strategic dialogue between experimental psychologists, neuroscientists, cognitive scientists on the one hand, and contemplative scholars/practitioners and philosophers on the other, in order to develop research protocols to enhance investigation of human mental activity;

2) to foster a cadre of nascent scientists (graduate students and post-docs) and contemplative scholars and philosophers to participate in the development of the next generation of scientists, clinicians, and scholars interested in innovation and collaboration at the mind-brain-behavior interface;

3) to advance a collaborative research program to study the influence of contemplative practices on the mind, behavior and brain function, by informed use of highly trained subjects in human neuroscience protocols;

4) to explore ways in which the first-person examination of mental phenomena, by means of refining attention and related skills, may be raised to a level of rigor comparable to the third-person methodologies of the cognitive sciences; and

5) to catalyze the creation of three new scientific and academic disciplines: Contemplative Neuroscience; Contemplative Clinical Science and Contemplative Studies.


Primary Theme

The 2009 Mind and Life Summer Research Institute (MLSRI) will be devoted to the theme of the self, its development in sociocultural and contemplative contexts, and its implications for human flourishing and social transformation. MLSRI 09 will bring together contemplatives and academic scholars from the social, developmental, and clinical sciences, the neurosciences, contemplative studies, and philosophy to dialogue about a variety of topics pertaining to the self. These topics will include conceptualizations of self and identity in various traditions; the development of self in normative and contemplative contexts; the neurobiology of the self, its development, and associated plasticity; the processes of self-identification and their effects on life outcomes such as health, education, well-being and social relations; the phenomenology of the "embodied sense" of identity, ownership and agency in experience, and the relation of these first-person perspectives to the brain and body across development; the concept of "self-regulation" and its relation to issues of mental causation, free-will, and a variety of life outcomes; the role of self processes in psychological illness; and finally, self versus no-self views on the fundamental nature of the mind and consciousness. MLSRI 09 will engage contemplatives, clinicians, researchers and philosophers in a series of dialogues around these themes with the explicit aim of presenting cutting edge research and stimulating new inter-disciplinary research on issues of self, human suffering, human flourishing and social transformation. Particular attention will again be given to how engagement in contemplative practices over a sustained period of time, as well as the psychological and philosophical theories of mind and consciousness that inform such practices, open new avenues for investigating topics pertaining to self,  its development and functions. Contemplative philosophy provides novel insights into the conceptual nature of self, and contemplative practice affords a uniquely well-suited context in which to study such insights in scientifically tractable ways. Similarly, current scientific research offers a variety of perspectives on the self, and a rich set of rigorous methodologies in which to study the self. Together, we believe that contemplative and contemporary science and philosophy can reveal new insights into the nature of self, mind and consciousness that will be of benefit to humanity.

http://www.mindandlife.org/sri09.ml.summer.institute.html

[revolve]

I'm not sure if that'd be similar to an out-of-body experience. The latter can be achieved "at will" by entering a certain state of mind between sleeping and being awake (sleep paralysis). To do this, you have to be extremely tired, e.g., you only slept 2 hours last night. Then you have to take a nap during the day. To make up for lost time, the brain will put you directly into REM sleep, which is usually only achieved hours after falling asleep. However, your brain knows you are tired, so you go straight to REM sleep. Now you have to sort of "wake up." The best way to do this is to take your nap with something really important in mind. For instance, choose to take the nap before having to go to class in 20 minutes.

Naturally, you will think to yourself that you cannot sleep, since there isn't enought time. But since you are so tired, you actually do fall asleep, without the desire to sleep. Because of this, you may enter a state of "sleep paralysis," where you can see perfectly fine through your eyes (looking straight at the ceiling) but your body is fully paralyzed (since the brain still has you under paralysis believing you are fully asleep). At this point, you can sort of let your mind wander, and any dream can come true. You just think whatever you want and you are dreaming it (lucid dreaming).

The first thing you must do is get out of bed. Since you are paralyzed, your body is not going anywhere. So you have to use your mental strength to "pull" yourself out of bed. Now, you can look back at the bed and guess what, there you are. You can also fly to the ceiling if you want to see yourself from up there.

Lucid dreaming is a good training ground for learning how to transcend one's self. Only by realizing the unreality of the dream (i.e., that it IS a dream), while nonetheless remaining WITHIN it, is the dreamer capable of turning the dream 'lucid' and experiencing it from a 'transcendent' perspective.

It is impossible to be inside the dream and outside the dream at the same time; yet we ARE inside and outside, in another sense, every time we dream. The best way to express this paradox, perhaps, is to imagine what it might be like to live the dream and to tell it at the same time. This is also precisely what what one attempts to do in 'lucid dreaming'! And why lucid dreaming produces that strange feeling associated with lucidity in dreams. The liminocentric structure of the experience forms a double-bind that throws us beyond ourselves, forcing us to become more than we are capable of being.

Our story takes place on three levels of thought that are also three levels of existence. We begin on the most obvious level, with our assumption that dreams are basically different from reality; on this level animals actually change from one form to another form when they die. Mind and matter are distinct; though they may interact and influence each other, they are made of different stuff. On the middle level we encounter the possibility of transforming mind into matter; this is the level where people dream, or think, about assuming another form and assume it... Finally, on the highest level, we find the undifferentiated substance that is always both mind and matter, the substance that underlies both the apparent changes and the less obvious transmutations that mental forces exert on apparent matter. On this level we realize that nothing ever changes into anything else, that everything was always there all along, and that everything was, for want of a better word, God.

[carless]

An NYT article quotes a couple of studies by Lisa K. Libby and colleagues. One of them looked at the behavior of voters and found that when they were asked to visualize themselves voting from a third-person perspective, they were more likely to be positive towards the idea of voting and more likely to actually vote than voters who visualized themselves voting from a first-person perspective. This finding is obviously very useful for motivation and behavior change therapy.

The implications of these results for self-improvement, whether sticking to a diet or finishing a degree or a novel, are still unknown. Likewise, experts say, it is unclear whether such scene-making is more functional for some people, and some memories, than for others. And no one yet knows how fundamental personality factors, like neuroticism or extraversion, shape the content of life stories or their component scenes. But the new research is giving narrative psychologists something they did not have before: a coherent story to tell. Seeing oneself as acting in a movie or a play is not merely fantasy or indulgence; it is fundamental to how people work out who it is they are, and may become.

"The idea that whoever appeared onstage would play not me but a character was central to imagining how to make the narrative: I would need to see myself from outside," the writer Joan Didion has said of "The Year of Magical Thinking," her autobiographical play about mourning the death of her husband and her daughter. "I would need to locate the dissonance between the person I thought I was and the person other people saw."

Lisa Libby, co-author of the study and assistant professor of psychology at Ohio State University, has also conducted another study in which the researchers recruited 27 college students who on a questionnaire rated themselves as socially awkward in high school. They were then asked to recall a socially awkward event from their high school years, either from a first-person or third-person perspective. Students who were told to take the third-person perspective were more likely than those who were told to take a first-person viewpoint to say they had changed, and were no longer so socially awkward.

But there was another twist to this study.

Immediately after filling out the ratings, students were individually put in a room with a person whom they thought was another student participating in the experiment. But in fact, the other person was an assistant of the researchers (who did not know whether the participant had been told to use the first or third-person in the study). The assistant turned on a concealed tape recorder to see how many times the participant attempted to start a conversation. The assistant also rated the participant on a variety of measures of sociability. The results showed that participants who had viewed their past socially awkward moment from a third-person perspective were more likely to initiate conversation, and were rated as more sociable by the research assistant. "When participants recalled past awkwardness from a third-person perspective, they felt they had changed and were now more socially skilled," Libby said. "That led them to behave more sociably and appear more socially skilled to the research assistant."

Here it is another interesting social psych study: 

Chen-Bo Zhong from the University of Toronto and Katie Liljenquist from Northwestern University have now revealed the strong links between unblemished hands and stain-free hearts in a series of clever psychological experiments. They asked two groups of people to remember a good or bad deed that they did in their past. They were then asked to fill in the missing letters in three incomplete words: W_ _H, SH_ _ _ER and S_ _P. Remarkably, those who remembered unethical deeds thought of cleaning-related words (like shower, wash and soap) x times more often than other words that could equally have fit (wish, shaker, step). Those who remembered ethical actions showed no such preference.

In another experiment, the duo wrongly informed a different group of people that they were taking part in a study investigating links between handwriting and personality. They asked each person to copy a first-person short story, where the protagonist either helped or screwed over a colleague. Later, the subjects were asked to rate certain household products in terms of desirability. Those who copied selfish stories were much more likely to want cleaning products like Dove soap and Crest toothpaste compared to those who copied selfless tales. Both groups showed equal preferences for random goods like batteries and post-its.

Clearly, memories of moral indiscretions, even if they are not one's own, bring thoughts of cleanliness to the front of the mind. Zhong and Liljenquist believe that physical acts that reduce our levels of physical disgust have a knock-on effect in making us feel morally purer. After all, physical and moral disgust are very similar, with repulsive smells or comments eliciting the same facial reactions and activating overlapping brain regions.



"Out, damn spot! Out I say!" In Macbeth's fifth act, Lady Macbeth treacherous murder of King Duncan takes its toll and she begins obsessively washing her hands to alleviate her guilty conscience. Now, some four centuries after Shakespeare penned his play, scientists have found that physical and moral cleanliness are just as inextricably linked as he suggested.



The link between bodily cleanliness and moral purity is evident throughout the world’s cultures. Cleansing ceremonies are common in religions. Christians and Sikhs literally wash away their sins through baptism, while the act of wudu sees Muslims prepare for worship by cleaning their bodies. Our language too reveals hints of an overlap – a 'clean conscience' is free of guilt, while the word 'dirty' commonly describes thieves and traitors.



But does it really work? Does cleansing truly absolve our minds of our sins? In a final experiment, the researchers find that, to an extent, it does. People were once again asked to describe a past wrong and some were allowed to wipe their hands with an antiseptic wipe. They were then asked if they would help out another graduate student by helping to pay for a research study. 74% of those who were not offered the wipe agreed. But many of those who wiped their hands also removed their moral stains, and only 41% of them offered help. Physical cleansing effectively halved the chances of future seflessness. While physical cleanliness clearly goes some way towards restoring moral integrity, it would be foolish to assume that hygiene is a miracle cure for guilt. As Zhong and Liljenquist themselves admit, "There are surely limits to the absolution afforded by a bar of soap."

[papyrus]

So what is the correct action in which there is no will, no choice, no desire - Now is it possible to see, to observe, to be aware of the beautiful and the ugly things of life and not say "I must have" or "I must not have"?. Have you ever just observed anything? Is there an action in which there is no motive no cause-the self does not enter into it at all? Of course there is. There is when the self is not which means no identifying process takes place.... Effortless observation....choiceless observation.... There is the perceiving of a beautiful lake with all the colour and the glory and the beauty of it, that's enough. Not the cultivating of memory, which is developed through the identification process. Right?

You want more and more and more and more, and "the more" means that the past sensation has not been sufficient...A mind which is seeking the 'more' is never conscious of 'what is' because it is always living in the 'more'-in what it would like to be, never in 'what is'. ... meditation is actually seeing 'what is'... when no identification.... not identified by thought....There are only sensation.

So we are asking is there a holistic awareness of all the senses, therefore there is never asking for the 'more'. I wonder if you follow all this? Are we together in this even partially? And where there is this total-fully-aware-of all the senses, awareness of it-not you are aware of it.... the awareness of the senses in themselves -- then there is no centre -- in which there is awareness of the wholeness. If you consider it, you will see that to suppress the senses... is contradictory, conflicting, sorrowful.... To understand the truth you must have complete sensitivity. Do you understand Sirs? Reality demands your whole being; you must come to it with your body, mind, and heart as a total human being....Insight is complete total attention...

I wonder if you know what it means to be aware of something? Most of us are not aware because we have become so accustomed to condemning, judging, evaluating, identifying, choosing. Choice obviously prevents awareness because choice is always made as a result of conflict. To be aware.... just to see it, to be aware of it all without any sense of judgement.... Just be aware, that is all what you have to do, without condemning, without forcing, without trying to change what you are aware of..... if you are aware choicelessly, the whole field of consciousness beings to unfold..... So you begin with the outer and more inwardly. Then you will find, when you move inwardly that the inward and the outward are not two different things, that the outward awareness is not different from the inward awareness, and that they are both the same.

Be alert to all your thoughts and feelings, don't let one feeling or thought slip by without being aware of it and absorbing all its content. Absorbing is not the word, but seeing the whole content of the thought-feeling. It is like entering a room and seeing the whole content of the room at once, its atmosphere and its spaces. To see and be aware of one's thoughts makes one intensively sensitive, pliable, and alert. Don't condemn or judge, but be very alert. To see "what is," is really quite arduous.

To observe 'what is', the mind must be free of all comparison of the ideal, of the opposite. Then you will see that what actually 'is', is far more important than what 'should be'....

At the beginning of the movie Next Nicholas Cage says "Here's the thing about the future, every time you look at it, it changes.. because you looked at it and that changes everything else." This is one of the principles of quantum physics and it is called the "observer effect."

Nothing is created without it first having been a thought, so everything "out there" comes from "in here" or is tied to the mind. This is explained very well in the movie "The Secret" although it focuses on just one quantum principle the "law of attraction" or what we think we attract. In fact it is what we think, therefore what we "see" that we create. This is what is meant by us being Co-Creators with God. There are so many possibilities to every outcome it is only by our choice, our perception or how we "see" a situation as to what that outcome will be. There are many players in this world and those who have a stronger "intent" regarding a certain experience will win out over those who have a doubt in their mind. So if you want a positive outcome for yourself you have to become obsessed with that outcome. Journal on it, visualize it, write it into your own personal life script and believe that because you "thought it" it has already happened, in the future on its own time loop. Like the secret says don't worry about the how because when the molecules are mixing it up and forming in this 3rd dimension there is always the possibility of a different outcome if you "change your mind" so just be patient and move forward with that goal/outcome, put action behind it and believe it.

Move from the brain to the spirit, the "Observer", the one we should be listening to all the time. It's that voice inside the one who is trying to teach us. Unfortunately our brains have been programmed and we have some very unhealthy automatic response patterns to certain situations. It happens so fast you end up saying "how could i have been so stupid" and "what was i thinking". Bingo! We were not thinking. We were making unconsciousness choices on what to "look for". Scientologists call them "engrams", it is like little movies or scenes during times of trauma that get burned into our memories, forming neurons into a strong pattern that reacts every time you get into a similar situation. That is what their "auditing" program is about, to clear you of that old programming so you can actually respond to life from your true authentic self.

Its like you can be so smart in many areas of your life but in this one particular situation, every time it comes up, and it keeps cycling back... you handle it badly. We make bad choices because we were not paying close enough attention to the situation. What was going on? Who was directing this scene? What were the other players intentions and what pattern from the past are we responding from? When we make a bad choice many people actually feel themselves as if they are outside of the body watching this stupid thing that we are doing as if detached. It's because the Observer does not want any part of it. The only thing you can do then is to go over it again and again and analyze it literally to death. That way each time you figure out another piece of the puzzle as to why you would do such a thing you are actually taking a different perspective therefore "seeing" it differently therefore, creating a new memory, changing it and your future. Otherwise you are doomed to repeat it unless you clear yourself of it. Memories are created by repetition so we have to choose a new "role" in that scene and work it, practice it, write it out, visualize doing it right then the new memories will take over next time the situation "arises." The old response patterns will vanish but will still be there as memories. So when we start to focus our attention on everything that is being created around us, by ourselves and by others, we can catch ourselves and stop the destructive patterns earlier. There is always a choice. If we can spend more time with ourselves in quiet meditation and "engage the observer" that is talk to that "higher self" we will be in closer contact with our true selves, our spirits and stop sabotaging our efforts.